Image reproduction devices commonly provide “scan-to-export” features to enable users to digitally capture hardcopy document images for transfer to other devices. For example, “scan-to-e-mail,” “scan-to-mailbox” and “scan-to-network” features can generate digital representations of original documents and transmit them as email attachments, deliver them to electronic mailboxes or transfer them to remote network servers, respectively.
Available scan-to-export methods and systems require all of the pages in a job to be scanned and processed, the connection between the sending device and the target to be established and the sending device to submit a request to transfer the completed file before the user can determine whether the target will grant the transfer request. If the target denies the request, the job will only be transferred if the user repeats the entire process and the target device grants the transfer request. In other words, all of the pages must be re-scanned, the data must be re-processed, the connection to the target must re-established, the file transfer request must be re-submitted to the target and the target must grant the re-submitted request. Further, since many users leave the scanning device as soon the last page of the job exits the document feeder, several minutes, hours or even days may pass before they learn that the request was denied by the target. This can be a significant problem for systems that capture the scanned data while the user is present, then store it for processing and/or transfer at some later time. In a worst case scenario, the user may discard the originals soon after they are scanned and permanently loose the data.
It would be beneficial to provide a way to indicate, while original documents are still being scanned, whether the target device will ultimately accept the request to transfer the completed job and also, to facilitate transactional scan processing.